


Quis Costodiet Ipsos Custodies

by Dardrea



Series: Dulce Periculum [2]
Category: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Bretons, Cyrodiil, Eventual orc boyfriend, F/M, Imperial City, Orcs, Orsimer - Freeform, Set in the Imperial City during the events of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Teratophilia, The Gray Fox - Freeform - Freeform, Thieves Guild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 06:06:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17975870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dardrea/pseuds/Dardrea
Summary: Spar's a Breton thief living in the Imperial City in Cyrodiil. The Great War is long done and the Aldmeri Dominion practically run the Empire. Undercurrents of discontent are stirring, war is threatening again in the far corners of the realm, but that all means little to her when she finds Nocturnal's Cowl and unwillingly takes up the mantle of the Gray Fox and the leadership of the Thieves' Guild.Spar--and The Fox--has unfinished business with a handsome orsimer guard who's been betrayed by his kinsman-in-arms, and the underworld lord who plans to use to the orc as bait.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (Who Will Guard the Guards?)

Spar was at the trial. The _public_ trial, like it wasn’t the sort of gross miscarriage of justice that should only be carried out in secret and in shadow, sentencing a good man to death on a trumped-up charge.

Urimmok Gro-Ghunzug, the last honest guard, stood surrounded by his former comrades, the ones he’d trusted to have his back even though she’d warned him. And by the Thalmor. Shiny Tom had friends in high places, indeed.

It was a Thalmor judge who sentenced him, on a charge of conspiracy to commit treason. They didn’t even bother to explain it further. Against the emperor? The Empire itself? The Legion? The Thalmor? Against the corrupt men who ran it all. His only crime was believing in any of them.

And she’d warned him.

Now he was alone, in chains, in prison rags instead of his fancy legion gear, with bruises and a swollen face. They’d tried to beat a “confession” out of him, clearly. She wondered how many of his former brethren had taken part.

He didn’t speak out in his own defense, wise enough now to know how pointless it would have been. He hardly seemed to see them, his accusers, his jury, or his judge. He held his head high and his eyes were set like stone, on a horizon he couldn’t see beyond the walls of the prison courtyard.

There wasn’t much fanfare to it. It was just another execution, after all, the Thalmor ordered many.

At least it wouldn’t happen immediately. The empire was terribly efficient, it would waste precious time if they had to pause for an execution between every trial. There would be a nice tidy line the next day, and all the condemned would march one-by-one to their turn on the block. It all went very smoothly: an hour’s work and the headsman would be done for the week, the prison cells cleared out, ready to be filled with the next week’s offerings.

Heads would roll and the orc would be dead. The honorably idiot would have gotten what he deserved for his naivety.

Could she let that happen?

Of course not.

* * *

She wasn’t above bribing a guard to get in to see the prisoners, or even saving her gold and trying to talk her way in under whatever pretense she could work up, but it didn’t seem prudent when she fully intended to break out the prisoner she was ostensibly going to ‘visit.’ Better to not be associated with any of it really, when they started asking questions later.

Rumors of the return of the Gray Fox had spread. Lots of people who should have believed it still didn’t, but it didn’t matter in this. The mask and its enchantment would only make the guards angrier if they saw her in it, it wouldn’t help her past them.

She had to rely on good, old fashioned sneakiness for that. She watched for nearly an hour, until the guard moved off from his station to take a piss and she walked right past him and through the door down to the cells, after a half a second delay spent picking the most laughably easy lock in the grand old imperial prison.

She shut the main door softly behind her, before creeping down into the grim space beyond it. Below ground, it was darker here, and the rows of cells on either side of the corridor were shadowy and mostly silent. The pall of the next day and the long shadow of the headsman’s axe, was already on the few occupants who shared the orc’s prison. She moved between the small, barred rooms, peering in to each, but also counting as she went.

It had seemed certain she’d have to free at least one more soul, deserved or not, to get the orc out and she was willing, but it turned out he was already in the cell she’d been looking for. She sighed in relief when she saw him, slumped in a corner, on the floor, not so different from how she’d found him in Tom’s basement. 

Not bothering to announce herself and hoping to escape the notice of the other condemned, it only took her a moment to pick the lock on his cell too, and let herself inside.

He looked up then, though the old iron hinges were well oiled and swung open without much noise.

His face screwed up with confusion, though that had to be uncomfortable, the way his left eye was swollen shut. Orcs were a hardy lot, but she hoped they hadn’t broken his orbital bone or something.

“What? What’re you doing here?” His voice was hoarse and thick. They’d done some damage to his jaw too, she’d bet.

At least he remembered her. She shook her head, gesturing for silence.

She hadn’t worn the hooded mask to get in but she’d come prepared, and one way or another she figured she’d probably need it to get him out. She toyed with it nervously as she approached him and only let it go to pull her picks out again. She didn’t know why she’d half expected him to try to jerk his chained hands away from her, but he left them dangling on his knees, silently twisting his wrists to give her easier access at the locks.

Relieved, she had them off him in less than a minute, even though he frowned at her through the whole thing.

“Didn’t I tell you not to go back to them?” she muttered under her breath.

“What difference is to you that I did?”

None. Obviously.

“Come on, we need to get ou—”

The door to the upper floor was flung open with such force it slammed into the wall and wrung a few startled cries from some of the other wretched souls in the cells around them. They hadn’t noticed her passing among them, but they couldn’t have missed this.

“I knew you’d come, _Gray Fox_ ,” Shiny Tom called, in dramatic, ringing tones as he stalked down the hallway towards the cell.

“You’d better remember it’s me,” she hissed to the orc, slipping a healing potion from her palm to his, knowing how useless that warning probably was. At least she’d already gotten his chains off, she thought, pulling the mask out of her pocket and over her head before she turned to the face the men coming to meet her.

She ignored the orc’s startled gasp as he caught a glimpse of her, just before she was fully facing their adversary.

“Did you?” she asked, in response to Tom’s boast. But it wasn’t Spar that any of them saw, not anymore. The Gray Fox wasn’t Spar; no one would ever confuse them.

She stood at the entrance of the cell, looking down the hall but not stepping out to meet the corrupt guards and their master.

Shiny Tom smirked, striding towards her in the very same ugly, mustard yellow boots she’d stolen at his command—from a nest of vampires. He was too confident in himself to look intimidated, or even nervous, though the city guards who trailed him were wise enough for both surprise and caution.

“Oh, yes!” he said, his gaze flicking over her. Bad luck for him, he wouldn’t see anything that would give her away as long as she was wearing the mask. “I may not understand why, but after you went to so much trouble to free that orc bastard before, well—there seemed little chance you wouldn’t come for him again. Especially if I arranged his appointment with the block. You just won’t leave him to the fate he deserves, will you?”

He was almost to the cell. She waited, tense, but patient enough to give him his moment. “Apparently, I won’t,” she said. Her gaze skimmed the men who trailed him, guards, not his usual crew, but none of the orc’s caliber and only the one mage in the lot, it looked like.

All the better.

Behind her she heard Urimmok getting to his feet. He was the only player that really worried her. So upright and honorable she wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t toss his own chance at escape for the opportunity to nab the terrible criminal mastermind. Never mind she’d had the mask for less than a month and no one had seen it before that in _centuries_ , it hadn’t taken her long to realize its powerful enchantments came at a price.

Like every person in front of her being covered by the wavery pink blur of Detect Life as soon as she was wearing it. She was getting better at picking out details through the pink though, and it was easier in low-light, like the dungeon gloom they were currently standing in.

There was rustling in the cells around them now, and the murmur of startled whispers. She tried not to feel guilty. She couldn’t save them all.

“I suppose he’s not too bad to look at, in a brutish sort of way. Though I wouldn’t have said he was worth dying for.”

“Perhaps not.” Her mind wasn’t on his words, or hers, they were just sounds.

He’d slowed. Frightened, in the end, to face the mask in all its unfeeling strangeness, or just rightfully worried about what surprises the fabled Gray Fox might have in store. The guards who followed at an amusing, increasing distance, watched her even more warily.

“You’re a fool to have come.”

But she could tell her composure rattled him. As far as he could see he had her cornered, but she wasn’t acting like the trapped beast he’d expected to find. Wild canids would gnaw off their own limbs when they were caught in a trap, rather than submit to capture. He had to be wondering why she was so casual about it.

“Maybe,” she agreed.

He was probably close enough but she’d have to move fast. Damn, she really shouldn’t enjoy this so much. She wasn’t like Shiny Tom, showman and con.

“But,” she continued. “If you knew I would come, maybe that makes you the fool.”

She pulled one of the other bottles from her belt and pitched the fragile glass vial at his feet, counting on him not recognizing the motion in the dark. His arrogance was her ally. If he’d been ready for it, or just more wary, with those boots he could have easily leapt past the choking cloud that erupted and blocked the view of the bowmen behind him, but he got a face full of it instead. She lobbed another further down the empty hall, in case he managed to catch his wind enough to try to escape that way, silently apologizing to the other prisoners.

On that flash of guilty thought, she tossed a couple of picks at the cell across the hall, hoping the prisoner who’d retreated, coughing, found them before the guards did—while she spun back into the orc’s cell to grab him by the shoulder.

He was choking, nearly doubled over, and she hadn’t even dropped the last vial yet. She wished she’d had the chance to check what the old Blade had told her, or even verify that they were in the right cell, but they were cornered now, so they _had_ to be.

Coughing, he let her push him towards the east wall where the bed shelf was built into the brick. The wall beside the alcove was slick and smeared with grime, the stones that formed it overgrown with trailing sheets of lichen and moss, spreading out across the cell from the leaky, barred window. It took her precious seconds to find the right brick, centered between the alcove and the other wall, seven up from the floor. It wiggled when she pressed on it and when she slid the key she’d been given into the mortar to its left she only had to drag it down an inch or so before she hit the hidden keyhole, twisting the key while she pressed the stone. 

The wall behind the bed opened, ancient gears grinding, ancient machinery obeying a long forgotten command. The Blades had been the keepers of the empire’s secrets for a long time, but they’d all been executed or driven into hiding at the end of the Great War, twenty years before.

“Go!” she said, shoving him towards that darkness and pitching the last vial at the entrance of the cell.

Tendrils of the smoke were starting to reach even her, curling up under the edges of the mask, and she didn’t dare linger until it overtook her.

Without argument, the orc disappeared into the black space behind the wall and she followed, fumbling as soon as she was through for the matching switch to seal up the passage behind them, holding her breath until the groaning of the mechanism stilled. From this side there was no going back with that hidden door closed, and as far as the Blade had known, the only key that could open it again even from the prison side was now in Spar’s possession.


	2. Chapter 2

There was only unrelieved darkness on this side of the door but she’d prepared for that, and struck a match, holding it up to look around. The air was clearer here, even if it was stale and old and smelled of dust. The orc still struggled to catch his breath but in the dim light of the match he staggered away, towards the wall opposite her.

On either side of the rough carved stone corridor where they stood, there were old torches in iron sconces and she pulled one down and spent a moment trying to light it. The fuel was certainly past its age, but it was still tacky to the touch. The first match burned out before she could get the torch to catch; she did better with the second, leaving her a brighter and steadier light to explore their surroundings.

The old Blade had spoken of the secret passage wistfully. A memorium of the days of Tiber Septim and Martin of Kvatch, when the blood of gods had chosen the emperor, not just the will of an increasingly corrupt council or invading high elves.

He hadn’t been able to tell her too much about what she might face. He hadn’t been through this way in decades and he doubted anyone else had either. Skeletons and ghosts had a tendency to turn up, he’d said. And goblins would break in sometimes, like cockroaches, creeping through hidden crevices as fast as they could be shored up against them.

In the old days the Blades had been tasked with clearing it out periodically, to maintain the path as a potential escape route for the emperor to leave the city, should the need arise, but with no more Blades…

She had to hope the healing potion had done enough for the orc, to get him past whatever was waiting for them. The thing had cost enough, it should. She had her daggers but she was a poor hand in a fight, especially an open one, and she could hardly have brought a quiver and bow into the imperial prison and expect not to be noticed.

His back to her, she pulled the mask off and folded it away into its pocket. She’d just have to see how he reacted to being rescued by the Gray Fox. And how capable he was of either sneaking past, or defending them from whatever was waiting below, between them and freedom.

* * *

She gave him a moment more of that pained, doubled-over wheezing—it really was a nasty poison she’d hit them all with, even if it didn’t do anything permanent.

Finally, she cleared her throat. “We should go,” she said.

His breath rasped, his chest heaved as he straightened, glaring at her. “You’re the Gray Fox,” he said, as if it was news. As if he hadn’t seen her put on and take off the mask before. She didn’t know how long he’d remember this time either.

She shrugged. It wasn’t a fight worth having if it was likely to be a recurring one. “I got you out,” she said, because that was what mattered. “—of your cell, anyway. Getting the rest of the way will be harder, you need to be on your guard.”

“And you?” he asked, his voice even raspier with the poison lingering in his lungs.

“I’m always on my guard,” she said, and struck out bravely ahead of him. She was the one with the torch, after all.

* * *

As far as weapons though, she only had her daggers and the orc was in prison rags and completely weaponless—but no longer bruised or limping at least, after the health potion she’d given him. The old Blade had said they’d likely find gear stored along the way, for emergencies. She hoped he was right, and that it hadn’t completed rotted and rusted in the intervening years.

The roughhewn corridor led down for a bit, and soon opened into the shining, white stone halls the Blade had spoken most fondly of. As lovely as the White-Gold Tower itself, and of similar make and age, it had the cool, lonely air of an ancient elven ruin and, she supposed, lived up to his soft-eyed remembrances.

There were stairs and terraces and doors out of their reach, and the ceilings loomed too high for her torchlight to breach the darkness, ornate arches sweeping up, out of her view. They were clearly well below the city, but a world away from the musty sewers, though the street kids told stories of similar chambers and paths there too, perhaps also left over from the long-dead Ayleid elves.

They found pillars that had crumbled, but the mass of the structures around them seem to have stood strong, keeping their ancient secrets safe. She waved the torch she carried—she should probably have lit the other one and given it to the orc but she wasn’t inclined to backtrack now—and she spotted what looked like it might have been a chest, tucked into an alcove on the higher level. She couldn’t reach it from their lower path, and though there was a door up there too, she didn’t know how to get to it either, or what dangers were on the other side of it. And the chest was right there.

She pointed. “Give me a hand?”

The orc looked at her, a brow raised. “You want to go thieving? Now?”

Her chin went up. “I have the blessing of about the closest person still left who’d have the right to give it. But I’ve also got armor and weapons and a particular skill with moving around unnoticed. I don’t know how much farther we have to go, or through what, but if you really want to continue as you are, I’m fine with that.”

He sighed in frustration, his lips pulling tight around his tusks, but he nodded and walked with her to the base of the wall where the chest was and locked his hands for her to step up, easily lifting her once he had her foot.

Useful, she couldn’t deny, even through her own annoyance, as she clambered up onto the higher tier and looked around carefully for traps before making for the chest.

It wasn’t even locked, but all she found inside it were a pair of dried up healing potions and a mana potion that she didn’t bother to take.

“Nothing,” she murmured, not hiding her disappointment.

“Is there another one over there?”

He was standing below her in the dark, and she popped her head over the edge to look down at him. “Where?”

He pointed at a different bit of raised stonework, a separate tier on a level with hers but separated by a good ten foot corridor. She went to the edge on her side and looked over at the other, holding the torch out. There was indeed a chest over on that side too. His eyes were much better in low light than hers were.

She considered the space between the two terraces and held the torch down for him to take.

“Wait, what are doing?” he asked, when she didn’t follow it down.

“Don’t worry about it.” It would have been easier with her old family ring, but she wasn’t afraid of the dark, or of a little bit of a jump.

“Don’t—are you mad?” he demanded, not the first time in their short acquaintance he’d asked that—as she went sailing over his head to the other side. There’d been enough room for a running jump and she had enough light from the torch below to know she would make it over.

“Probably,” she muttered. If she wasn’t she’d have lit out of town weeks ago and be well into another province by now. She crept, cautious without the light but counting on the look she’d gotten before she’d passed the torch to him.

“What if it’s locked?” he grumped.

She snorted. “You think I need light to pick a lock? What sort of half-assed thieves have you known?”

As though he’d cursed her though, this chest _was_ locked, but she hadn’t been boasting idly and it gave her hope that meant it might hold something useful. She was more satisfied than she would normally have been to hear the snick of that lock disengaging, and she wished pointlessly that he’d been on that level with her to see it.

Even better, she’d been right to be hopeful: this chest held an old set of creaky armor, a sword, and a torch. It wouldn’t be great stuff, and she couldn’t judge its quality up there in the dark, but it was better than what he had and she held it up over the edge triumphantly. “It’s something!” she said.

He frowned at her. “Then come down.”

She rolled her eyes and let him take the heavy gear and help her off the edge.

* * *

It was a twenty-year old set of Blade armor, good for its time, but the years hadn’t been particularly kind, though the cool, relatively dry air of the ruins could have been much crueler. The steel sword hadn’t fared as badly as the leather straps and padding, but it didn’t have much of an edge.

She supposed if it splintered on the first thing he hit with it, he could use the shards of the blade like daggers.

While he struggled his way into the armor, fighting the brittle straps and rusted metal bits, she tried to light the new torch from hers, quickly wishing she’d just taken the other torch where they’d come in, since the fuel on this one had completely wiped off or dried up. She was finally able to smear enough from the lit torch to get it burning, but he was almost done changing by then.

She looked at him when he rejoined her, and passed him the brighter of the torches. “The armor of the Blades suits you,” she told him.

“The Blades?”

The Thalmor had done a good job erasing them. She’d read the tales in a book back in High Rock. “You haven’t heard of them? You’d have liked them, I think. Loyal to the emperor for who knows how many ages. Honorable to the end.”

“What happened to them?” He rolled his shoulders and the old armor creaked. He wouldn’t be much good at sneaking in it, hopefully it would at least protect him.

Her lips twitched, but it was a grim humor that pulled at them. “They were betrayed after the White-Gold Concordant and hunted down by the Thalmor. They trusted the traitors they served with and now they’re all dead.” Almost all.

He grunted, either not getting, or choosing to ignore the hint. “Never heard of them.”

She stood up from the crumbled masonry she’d perched on while he’d dressed. “Of course not. The Empire doesn’t like to advertise its own treachery.”

* * *

She put her hand out when she heard the dry, scraping sound through the door ahead of them.

It was a maze of tunnels down here, but not worse than the sewers. At least here it was mostly a single path, even if it wasn’t a straight one. Doors and passages that led to one side or the other always seemed to dead end or loop around, sending them back down that one, singular way through the sparkling white stone.

They wouldn’t get lost; it should be comforting, but instead she worried about what they were supposed to do if that one narrow way was blocked, by ruins too crumbled to move past, or enemies too powerful to overcome. Though they hadn’t come across anything but a few rats so far, and he’d taken care of them easily enough. She’d have sneaked past them if she’d been alone, the smell of blood made her nauseous, but she didn’t know what lay ahead and whether she’d be able to sneak past all of it.

He stopped before he ran into her arm and when she glanced at him he nodded, acknowledging that he heard it too. It had already stopped but—no, there it was again. Something was moving on the other side of the door.

She held her torch out for him, wondering how much of its light was visible to whatever was on the other side, and nodded her head back the way they’d come.

His mouth parted, his face screwed up in insult and he shook his head, not reaching for her torch. He deliberately put his free hand on the handle of the sheathed sword.

Was she supposed to let him lead just because he was better armed? Potentially? He had a lighter step than she’d feared, at least in the ragged prison ‘boots’ he wore that were little more than cloth strips tied around his feet, better for muffling noise than protecting them, but she wasn’t giving up the element of surprise just because he thought he made a better meat shield.

They couldn’t afford to argue it out right there, and she had the end of the argument tucked away in her pocket anyway. Glaring at him, she pulled the mask out and tugged it on.

He stiffened immediately, lips curling and nose wrinkling, like he smelled something foul, and she tried not to take it personally. He didn’t care so much about playing gallant when it was the Gray Fox offering herself in his place.


	3. Chapter 3

He took her torch and she looked forward, through the door and wall, into the room beyond. Three tall, humanoid forms waited on the other side. Not humans, not down here, after all this time. Too tall to be goblins though. She held up three fingers for him but didn’t turn around again.

One of the figures was just on the other side of the door, the other two were farther away and possibly lower down.

She waved at him and the dimming of the light told her the orc was walking the torches away from her.

She waited, in the increasing darkness, the pink shape just out of her view seeming to grow brighter, not because it was closer but because there was less light for it to compete with.

She set her hand on the wood, and on the door pull, so she wouldn’t lose it if the light left her completely, and waited for that lingering shape to move enough to the right that she could open the door without hitting it, and creep past it, as long as it kept its back in that direction. In the pitch darkness it would never know she was there, she had no doubt of that, even if she hadn’t had the mask.

She edged the door open carefully, listening for any telltale creak. With the mask, so focused on the pink light that it showed her, she wasn’t aware enough of the dim glow that was already lighting that room. They hadn’t come across any up to that point, but she’d heard about the silvery, luminescent crystals the ancient Ayleids had been so fond of. The faint outline of a staggering zombie was limned in a pale glow as soft and incongruously sweet as moonlight.

It turned. It saw her in the doorway in the same instant she made sense of how well she could see it, around that pink smear of magic.

It snarled, reaching for her. She staggered back from those long, grasping arms, trying to pull the door closed, but it was too late, it had already caught the door in one hand and she was strong with the mask, but the dead thing seemed to have no limit to its own impossible strength.

With its other hand it swiped—the lightning fast motion of a greater zombie, damn it—and its finger-bone claws pierced the leather of her jerkin and dug into the flesh of her shoulder before she could scramble away. She’d have liked to be braver but couldn’t stop herself crying out at the pain, because gods, did it _hurt_.

Its rotted fingers dug like hooks into her flesh, it pulled her towards it. The dagger in her free hand sank harmlessly into the side of its chest, hilt-deep, not even making it pause as it drew her towards its snapping, growling mouth. She couldn’t even care about its two companions, scrabbling noisily from the next room on, through a large, open archway, coming to join the feast. They might get to her before the closer one killed her but they wouldn’t be the ones to get the first bite in and that was one that worried her most, for the moment.

She couldn’t even pull that dagger out of it to try again, the blade had lodged in its ribcage and stuck there and shoving at the creature’s chest wasn’t going to save her when its arms were so much longer than hers. She’d abandoned the door to try to stab it, which had allowed it to use its other arm to grab her as well, with less force but no less insistence, pulling her in—

Something else grabbed her from the other direction, jerking her back, though the zombie wouldn’t be detangled and fell towards her, which wasn’t better. A shadow passed between them, and that _was_ better, breaking the tension, leaving her stumbling away, though the arm attached to the fingers that pierced her shoulder came with her.

It only seemed to take the orc a moment, just two more swings of the old Blade sword, to cut the dead thing down, and make it stop moving.

She felt she should have tried harder, gone after him perhaps, tried to guard his back as he strode forward into that eerily lit room to engage the other two, but it was all she could do to pull the zombie hand out of her armor and her flesh. One of its fingers snapped off in her gear, and the smell hit her. Too dry to be rot anymore, as old as it was, but zombies still had a smell, and she was all too familiar with it.

She should have at least watched the fight, in case he was overcome and she needed to run, if for no other reason, but she sank to her knees, tore the mask off, and retched, one arm clasped over her wounded shoulder. She swore she could feel the finger still squirming under her hand like a maggot trying to burrow deeper and she heaved again.

She knew he’d won by the silence, and by the measured footfalls that broke it a moment later.

She started tearing at her gear, the fastenings sticking under her panicked fumbling until she could get enough of them undone to shrug out of it and toss her jerkin whole at the wall, shuddering and gasping.

“This is how the great master thief handles a couple of desiccated zombies?”

She could have hated him for the cool tone of his voice, and for that scent of gore that came with it, but she was just glad he’d come back and she wasn’t alone with those things. He’d killed them. They were gone. She shivered in her light undershirt and hugged herself.

“How badly are you hurt?” Concern colored his voice. Perhaps he’d expected some snappy comeback, worthy of The Fox, but she didn’t have it in her right then.

She tried to crawl away, still on her knees, when he went to his in front of her, and he was frowning as he reached out, catching her right shoulder and her left arm, below the wet stain that held her shirt to her skin. She looked at him, afraid.

His eyes flicked between her face and her shoulder. He carefully pinched a clean edge of the material at her neck and pulled it away. He’d left the torches some distance behind them but he seemed to think he could see all he needed to.

“It doesn’t look very bad,” he said, softly. He rubbed and then patted her undamaged shoulder, a subconscious gesture she might have wondered about if she wasn’t still shaking and nauseous.

“It’s not,” she said, but she couldn’t sound brave because she wasn’t. This was the wrong face of the thrill she always got when she was sneaking about somewhere she shouldn’t be.

His expression changed. Softened. She didn’t like it. She didn’t want his pity, though she couldn’t deny, she was pitiful.

“Do you have any more of those healing potions?”

She shook her head. It was fine. She was fine. He was right; it wasn’t that bad a wound, she just needed a moment to compose herself. She took a deep breath and her stomach lurched again.

She couldn’t keep looking at him. It was easier to turn her head down and close her eyes. It helped settle her stomach.

He rubbed his thumb along her collarbone, his hands the only points of warmth in the entire world. She was holding herself stiff against the need to just shuffle forward in search of more of that welcoming heat. “Do you know any healing spells?”

“What, because I’m a Breton?” she snapped.

“Yes.”

She wanted to pull away from him but she was so cold.

“Yes,” she muttered. She’d never been good with magic, but even she knew a few simple spells, including a very basic healing spell. She’d known it since she’d been in the nursery, for all she knew; she didn’t even remember learning it.

Halfway through, his sigh became a weary chuckle. “You should heal yourself, little thief.”

“I’m fine.”

“The scent of your blood could give you away to whatever we come across next.”

She rubbed her arms, trying to kindle any spark of his warmth in herself, but failing. He wasn’t wrong. Fine then.

It took much more effort and concentration than it would have taken any of her cousins, but she called up the little spark of magic that she so rarely used and let it flow in a warm rush through her fingertips. She was clumsy with it, even on her best days, but it would suffice. He took his hands off her—a shame—but his warmth lingered, and mingled with the gentle heat of her spell.

She’d need to find a potion or pay to use one of the altars in the temple if she didn’t want to risk ending up worse off later, but she couldn’t worry about potential fallout now.

The orc stood, retrieved her jerkin, and held it out for her.

She shrank away in disgust, gorge rising in her throat.

He held it away from her. “What’s wrong?” He sounded much more patient than she deserved. She could hardly find the words to explain and fought down the sickness with each one. “There’s a… finger—caught—”

He walked away from her and returned a moment later, both torches in one hand and her jerkin in the other. “Here,” he said, holding it out again. “Got it.”

She felt like an idiot, still kneeling at his feet, the scent of her own sick mingling with the stink of the zombies. It was easier to stay like that to pull her torn jerkin back on. He put his hand out to help her back to her feet when she was done but she pointedly ignored it and stood on her own.

“Thanks,” she said, not looking at him, though she took one of the torches.

“I believe the debt is still mine.”

“There’s no debt,” she said, taking the lead and not looking at what was left of the zombies as they passed them.

* * *

Further on they stumbled on a skeleton, the kind that didn’t get up and chase after adventurers in shadowy ruins. She couldn’t tell if it was one of the zombies’ former companions who’d been lucky enough to avoid that sad fate at least, or just the remains of one of their former victims, but the quiver and arrows jumbled among the bones, and the bow that lay just beyond them as if it had been kicked there in some long ago scuffle, caught her interest.

The wood had lost much of its flex but it bent rather than broke when she tested it, and when she plucked the string it trembled but didn’t snap.

“If you don’t mind?” She held it out.

The orc just nodded his head. “All yours,” he said.

It made her feel better. She didn’t have any more skill with a bow than with her daggers but it had a much safer range, especially if there were any more zombies around.

* * *

Periodically she’d pull the mask on, just to check around them, too wary of a repeat with the zombies to risk just leaving it on. Uri'd watch her carefully when she did it, but he didn’t look as unfriendly about it anymore.

“You’re too young to be the Gray Fox,” he finally said.

She was sick of the ruins, even more sick of them than she was of the sewers perhaps, and that was saying something.

“I’m twenty-six,” she reminded him gruffly.

“But too young to be the Gray Fox,” he said again. “The stories go back…”

“Centuries,” she finished for him. And there weren’t any recent ones. Or at least there hadn’t been. She’d had the mask for a few weeks and now there would be one about the Gray Fox breaking an orc out of the Imperial prison, for example. Even if it hadn’t gone quite how she’d planned, she still felt a certain amount of pride about that.

But the mask protected its own reputation. He was probably only putting this together because he was watching her put it on and take it off, so many times, in such quick succession. He’d forget it soon enough and hate her for being the lawbreaker she was anyway, even without it.

She’d told Idhasa a dozen times, let the Khajiit watch her put the stupid mask on and take it off again, just like the orc, and even her oldest friend in the Imperial City couldn’t keep it straight in her head that _Spar_ was the same woman who wore the Gray Fox’ mask.

“How long have you had it?”

She sighed. “Three and a half weeks. Since I got you out of Shiny Tom’s basement.”

He was behind her and still she could _hear_ him flinch.

“And now you’ve rescued me again,” he said.

“Seems so.”

“Why?”

She picked up her pace a little, not wanting to revisit all that. “It just didn’t seem right. You were only there because you trusted where you shouldn’t. And because Tom thought it would lure me out.”

“And it did.”

“The Gray Fox does not turn down a challenge.”

“You’re not the Gray Fox.”

She stopped, right where she was, and he almost bowled into her, his hand briefly brushing her back to stop the collision, before she turned and stared up at him, eyes narrowed. “What?”

His gaze briefly flicked away, but then returned, examining her up-tilted face. “You aren’t, are you? If you’ve only had it three weeks? You’re—”

“Spar,” she said, firmly. Waiting for confusion to cloud his features.

But he smiled, and she felt it like a blow to the center of her chest. “Spar,” he repeated, softly, like he meant to remember it.

Her hands itched but she wasn’t someone who reached out, unless there was a purse to be had. So she just stared at him, watching the expressions pass across his face.

When they got out, he’d keep going. An escape route built for an emperor would see him out of her city and he couldn’t even try to return this time; even he couldn’t doubt his brothers and sisters in the guard weren’t on his side. There wasn’t any reason for him to stay.

Maybe he’d go north, back to Skyrim, like she’d thought she might, when she’d still thought she could leave. Maybe he’d go back to High Rock, where she never intended to go again.

Without saying anything else she turned and bounded ahead of him down the shining, white stone stairs. He hesitated, giving her a bigger head start, but he didn’t say anything either as he followed her down.


	4. Chapter 4

Things had changed in the ruins and were getting worse the deeper they went. Instead of the odd, fallen pillar there were more fallen than standing, and large chunks of silvery white masonry had crumbled and scattered, exposing black swaths of the bedrock of the city isle. The terraces and tiers were shattered in places, and their path was growing more dangerous and obstacle-ridden the further they went, the harder pace forcing them to stay to close, to take turns passing their torches where both hands were needed to clamber over or around the broken stone.

Uri grabbed her arm, nearly startling her into a screech.

He sniffed the air, his eyes sweeping the shadows beyond their torchlight.

“Goblins,” he whispered.

“You can’t smell that!” she hissed back, remembering the vampires below the Imbel mansion.

He gave her a look, brows raised. “Can’t you?”

He was so damned reasonable, she gave a small sniff. And she did smell something. She’d never seen a goblin, she had no idea what they smelled like, but there was a very unpleasant scent on the air, mingling with the smell of damp stone and dust.

She pulled the mask out and slipped it on.

Well, damn.

She held her hand up, thumb and all four fingers spread.

“…and maybe some rats,” she added. “Something smaller and closer to the ground.”

He nodded and flashed her a glance, but immediately returned to scanning the darkness in front of them. She’d have offered him the mask if she’d thought for a second he would have accepted. “Can I go point, this time?”

If he’d sounded even the slightest bit smug… she’d still have let him go first because she wasn’t an idiot, but she’d have felt a lot more bitter about it. “Go. But I’m staying close until we know exactly how they’re laid out.”

He nodded and slid past her, unsheathing his sword, leading with the blade, the torch in his other hand low and held well behind him. She followed, wishing she could get the bow out but it was useless one handed and she wasn’t ready to give up the torch yet.

They turned the corner and found a large broken piece of the ceiling blocking their way. It had brought down one of the terraces and the rubble of the two combined to fill in the passage that should have led them forward. He had to sheathe his sword again to safely maneuver through the mess but between the two of them they could only agree that their path had ended.

But there was that smell.

Not finding a way out was as good as accepting their deaths, so they kept searching until they found a new, narrow passage, not through white stone, but through dark rock, crudely carved and hidden in shadow behind the rubble. It was more of a squeeze for him than for her but she let him lead. She had no doubts which of them would fare better against the goblins.

There was light ahead of them and they wedged their guttering torches in between the stolen and discarded white bricks that lay along the way.

She didn’t bother to put on her mask again; they could hear them now, and see the diffuse light of their fires.

She saw the closest one striding through the great cavern that their corridor opened on, and only a second later saw the tripwire stretched across the entrance. Uri was already out of her reach, so she smacked his arm with the long end of her bow and pointed with it towards the floor where the trap was set. He paused, but only for a moment, and she hoped his nod meant he saw it too.

Her attention returned to the goblin. It was a small, shuffling thing, scrawny and hunched, in ‘armor’ that looked like it was cobbled together out of old tin dishes and rat bones. Its helm was a skull. What disturbed her most was how human it looked, in its short, bony way.

People spoke of them like they were vermin but it didn’t look very different to her from any other race of man or mer. She contemplated the back of Uri’s head, and wondered if there was any way they could reason with the things for passage through their cave. The beggars and street kids warned of whole sections of the sewers that were infested with the creatures, but the consensus seemed to be that as long as those areas were avoided they weren’t much trouble.

Uri stepped out into the cavern, carefully moving over the tripwire, and swung his sword.

No negotiating then.

Even in his rags, he wasn’t as quiet as he should have been. The goblin spun and screeched and backed out of her view, and she didn’t think Uri’s swing connected. He followed and she scampered after him, her bow ready.

It had taken her a fraction of a second to catch up, at least as far as the entrance of the corridor, which was as far as she’d intended to go anyway, but he’d already run the goblin down and she slinked out into too much light in time to see him pulling his sword free. For being such an old and dull weapon, it had nearly bisected the poor goblin, every bit as easily as it had done the same to the zombies.

The distinctive whoosh warned her of an incoming spell and she threw herself back into the dark corner past the corridor but she hadn’t been the target anyway. The orc dodged, quick where he wasn’t quiet, and the wall beside him lit up briefly in a blaze of red-orange flame.

There were natural pillars of stone in the cave and the spell-casting goblin was dancing around behind one of them, making it hard to take aim at it.

Suddenly another shape came screeching out of the dark, up from what she hadn’t even realized was a dip in the cave floor, a club raised and aimed at Uri’s knee, breaking his stride towards the other goblin, making him spin and dodge directly into her line of fire.

She hissed and tried to adjust her aim at the nearer goblin instead, but it was too small and fast and near the orc for her to risk shooting at it.

Gods, she was worthless, but what was she supposed to do? She was a fucking thief, not an adventurer.

And then another of the creatures bounded out of the darkness in the first one’s wake, so there were two on Uri—and the caster’s next firebolt caught him square in the chest while he was trying to keep from being swept away by the two that were already attacking. He flinched, and he shouted, but he seemed more angry than wounded, baring his teeth and moving where the caster would have to come out around the stone column again if it wanted to keep firing at him.

He could keep the closer ones at some distance just by swinging that great long sword, but with two of them it was much easier for at least one to be where his blade wasn’t, and that was without the caster.

So she took aim at the caster again. She didn’t think any of them were aware of her yet, but it was a restless creature, hopping back and forth as it readied another spell, fire lighting the spaces between its cupped hands.

It cast its spell and then it leapt to the right and they both missed their targets, the wall beside Uri lighting up again while her arrow pinged impotently against the stone column behind the goblin caster and ricocheted off into the dark.

But it hadn’t seen her, and it turned with a snarl to search out the noise her arrow had made, _behind_ it.

Her next shot didn’t miss, sinking into its back, low along its spine. That wasn’t where she’d been aiming, but it fell and didn’t move again. Not bad for all the years that had passed since she’d last had reason to fire a bow.

Except that she’d never killed anything but rabbits and fox and the odd deer on her family’s estate, and she hadn’t much liked that.

No time for guilt. She hadn’t forgotten that there was one more goblin somewhere and a handful of small something elses.

The orc’s stance was lower, defensive, and the growls he was making in response to the goblins’ screeching wasn’t doing much to change her mind about how much the creatures were like them.

Still, it was clearly past the point of diplomacy. She tried to take aim at the one on the far side of him, since in its back and forth dance, baiting the orc, the distance it put between them made a safe shot seem likelier.

Movement caught her eye, and color: a bright blue, utterly out of place in this dark world of black stone and dirty orange light. She swung her bow to the left, adjusting her aim for the greater distance as the fifth goblin crept out of a further corridor.

She didn’t need to know anything about goblins to know this one was a caster too, and a higher ranking one, however goblins ranked themselves. Draped in cloth of blue and white, it carried a tall staff, capped with what looked disturbingly like another goblin’s head.

It shrieked when it saw its companions fighting the orc, and let loose a barrage of sounds that could have been orders or curses.

Twisting the staff in its hands it adjusted its grip, pointing it at the battle, the eyes of the goblin head staff suddenly glowing blue, sparking and crackling—

She let her arrow fly.

Pulling a little high, she’d hit the goblin’s throat, silencing those sounds—words—it had been making. The creature dropped, the staff dimming and clattering on the stony ground beside it.

Both of the goblins on the orc spun around at that, looking in horror on the other one’s death. A fatal show of sentimentality; the orc cut them both down with one wide swing.

He straightened slowly, eyes still sweeping for further attackers. Below them, in that natural depression in the cave, caged rats squealed and squeaked their panicked confusion.

Finally he looked at her again, and nodded his chin.

Now he approved?

She didn’t argue, just pulled the mask back on and looked around. There was nothing but the two of them and the rats within any worrisome distance. She pulled the mask off and shook her head. “It’s clear.”

He sighed and shook his head too, his shoulders slumping as he started wiping the Blade sword clean on a strip of cloth she realized he must have torn off his prison rags. His armor and even his skin had been splashed too, or—some of it was probably his own blood, she realized, but his focus was the weapon.

She didn’t want to go to where he was, in the middle of a pile of three dead goblins, their accusing, sightless eyes watching her, but she was practical, even when she didn’t want to be.

Still on guard, he didn’t make a move against her but his eyes narrowed on her as she reached out for his arm, where he’d obviously been cut, clear through the twenty-year old armor.

“You don’t have to,” he said gruffly, when her hands started to glow a dim white.

“You reminded me I know at least the one useful spell, you may as well let me use it on you.” Twice in one day, though? She’d have a hell of a headache in a few hours; hopefully they’d be out of all this by then.

The healing gave her some sense of his injuries and she winced. The goblins were small but they were fierce and they’d managed to get in more hits than she realized. None of the cuts were deep, the one goblin’s rusty little dagger hadn’t been good for much, but the other one’s club had gotten in a few good blows, a nasty one to his knee and another to his side that had cracked a rib.

She didn’t know if orcs were just that tough that it didn’t bother him or if he was still riding the high of battle and it hadn’t hit him yet or if he was that stoic that he just wouldn’t let it show. All together it was more damage than she’d taken to her shoulder and her piddly little spell couldn’t completely mend it all.

Still, he sighed when she was done, and touched the back of her hand, where it was still lightly holding his arm.

“Thanks,” he said.

She let him go and backed away, trying not to stumble over the dead goblins.

“We have to keep going. The goblins must have a way out. Either through more goblin caves, or, hopefully, back through the sewer.”

Apparently pleased enough with the cleanliness of his sword he resheathed it but his nose wrinkled at her words. “The sewer?”

“It was where that path we were on was supposed to lead anyway. To a small tract of sewer tunnels that open out on the shore, not too far from a sand bar. There was a time they would have kept a small boat there to ferry the emperor across if they needed to get him out, but it shouldn’t be too hard to swim across lake Rumare. The slaughter fish and mud crabs’ll be a pain but I imagine you can handle them.” She shrugged. “If we’re lucky, that’s where we end up. But at least if this connects back to the sewer proper I can still probably get you out of the city, it’ll just take longer.”

“Hm,” he said, giving her a strange look. Then he turned and walked down to the lower level where the rats were still scrabbling at their cages.

She followed him and stopped where he had, looking down at the frightened little captives.

“We can’t just leave them there to starve to death,” she said, not knowing if he’d been thinking the same thing but not able to get the idea out of her head. They’d eat each other and the survivor would still die horribly.

“Do you want to let them go?”

“Maybe?” It was that or kill them, it would still be kinder than leaving them trapped.

His lips twitched but he didn’t look at her. “Alright. Back up a bit.”

She did. He took his sword out and she took out her bow but didn’t bother to pull an arrow. Hopefully it would be enough to just knock them off if they got it into their diseased little heads to come after her.

But when he pulled the pin and opened their cage the rats scrambled out between and past them, scurrying away into the darkness.

* * *

She’d thought briefly about taking the goblin staff but she couldn’t make herself do it, not and get so close to the goblin she’d killed, so she just walked past it all and continued into the goblin tunnels.

She breathed a little easier when a few minutes walking did bring them back into the familiar, dark, even brickwork of the ancient sewers. And it was dry, tunnels and catwalks raised well above the water that churned below, though the smell wasn’t even very bad here.

And there were no more zombies or goblins, and though she could hear rats scurrying along around them, and see the pink glow of them when she looked around with the mask on, nothing else attacked them.

She heaved a sigh when they found a barred grate in front of them in a long, straight, circular tunnel. There was daylight on the other side, a small, perfect circle of it. The goblin’s detour had paid off.

The old Blade’s key fit into that lock too, and with a rusty whine of iron hinges too long exposed to the watery mist off the lake, the grate swung open and they were free.


End file.
